


Six Swans

by Innibis



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Banishment, Evil!Laura Roslin, F/M, Family Drama, Happy Ending, Magic, Minor Character Death, Muteness, Pilots, Plotty, frakked-up fairy tale, tendency toward angst in places, viper the horse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-18 09:40:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innibis/pseuds/Innibis
Summary: The story of bordering countries at war, dissention in the ranks, a magical curse with a nonsensical way to break it, Romeo and Juliet vibes and love by the sea. With pilots!As is sometimes my way, both BSG and the Six Swans fairy tale have been dismantled and put back together again to suit my purposes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Putting the blame squarely on recent conversations with other old school shippers that made me want to possibly start writing again after 72 years off, but in the meantime I'm moving stuff over from LJ. For posterity I guess? It was a miracle I remembered that account’s password. . .
> 
> I thank my beta, workerbee73, for keeping my molting to a minimum.

Lee cradled his younger brother in his arms as the life drained out of him. "Zak—" his voice broke over his name. He watched Zak's eyes closely, willing him to hold on, to fight a little harder, a little longer, to not leave him. But Zak's blood continued to pump out of the wounds in his chest and thigh, sliding through Lee's fingers with every increasingly weak beat of his heart. "Zak, you can’t do this."

Zak managed a faint grin. "You're not the boss of me," He gasped. The breath rattled in his chest.

"I am," Lee said, half laughing, half sobbing and sick inside. "I am, and I'll tell Dad that you won't listen to me."

With obvious effort, Zak brought his hand up to cover Lee's as it pressed hard on his chest. "Tattle tale," he said affectionately.

"Zak. _No_." Lee demanded, ordered as his brother's eyes rolled back in his head. "You little frakker you do not get to do this to me!" He started at the hand on his shoulder and looked up to find his cousin, Karl, standing behind him with tears in his eyes.

Karl knelt down next to the brothers and put his hand over Zak's where it still covered Lee's "Hey, Zak," he spoke gently.

"Take care of Lee," Zak's voice was fading. "Don't let him be too serious."

"You got it," Karl said. He slung his free arm over Lee's shoulders and pulled at his cousin until Lee leaned against Karl's solid frame. "I'll miss you, kid."

Reality hit Lee so hard that he lost his breath, lost his voice lost feeling in everything but his fingers, sticky with his brother's blood and pressed underneath the palms of the two most important people in his life. This was it, but words were failing. He couldn’t say good-bye, couldn’t express his love or say anything witty to make Zak smile in his final seconds. He couldn’t even force air into his lungs. So Lee leaned forward and kissed his brother's forehead, and then pressed his face into Zak's hair.

Zak's hand tightened on his. "See you on the other side, Lee." And then he was gone.

The cousins leaned on each other in the mud for a long time, even as the Galacitca border patrol swarmed around them, taking statements and stitching up wounds, studiously giving the grieving princes their privacy as they held Zak's body. The only clear thought in Lee's mind, cutting past the emptiness that he was certain would have made him simply disappear into thin air had Karl not been hanging on so tightly, was that those Cylon bastards were going to pay.

* * *

Kara sat in stunned silence with her brothers and sisters. Sharon had been captured by the Galacticans. These days misery seemed to pile on top of misery. Their father had died suddenly and unexpectedly only a month before and now this—a sister lost in a retaliatory raid to revenge the accidental death of a prince. Kara stood up slowly. "We have to go find Mom," she said.

Caprica blinked out of her daze, "You're right," she said. "She'll need us," and rose to her feet, pulling Simon up with her. One by one, the ruling family of Cylon stood. Where there had once been eight siblings, there were now seven, but Kara was incapable of giving up hope. Her sister was strong, they all were, the children of warriors in a warrior culture.

They slowly began to drift out of the room, the meeting place with the round table where the head family ruled by committee. Everyone had a vote and all votes were equal. Each member of the family was required to voice their opinion on all matters of the ruling of the country once they came of age. As the youngest, Kara had been voting the least amount of time, but she had been attending the daily meeting since she was a child and had been anxious to make her voice heard. The day she took her place at the table, next to Sharon, she had been terrified of the responsibility, but determined to make a difference. She slid her hand over the back of Sharon's chair as she followed D'Anna out into the hall.

They made their way to their mother's chambers, where Galen, who had been leading the way, abruptly stopped in the doorway and stared. "For God's sake, Galen, what—" Doral trailed off.

Kara blew out her exasperation in a short, forceful exhale before walking forward and pushing her brothers out of the way. The bile rose in her throat as she saw her mother pulling out of the arms of Kara's cousin, Cavil, hastily buttoning a shirt over her bare breasts. "What the frak, Mom?" Kara spat out, ill, as Cavil just smiled at her, making no move to straighten his clothing.

"Kara," Ellen began, "Galen, Doral—" she stopped naming names as, one by one, each of her remaining children filed into the room. She slumped onto a chair and said woodenly, "Your father is dead, your sister is gone. Cavil has been very supportive."

"He's your nephew!" Leoben's voice cracked out accusingly.

"Technically, he's your father's nephew; we aren’t related by blood," Ellen countered.

"He's our _cousin_ ," Kara stated, not looking at the way Cavil sprawled over her parents' bed. "You have known him his entire life."

"So what?" Ellen asked, anger giving edge to her voice. "I will live my life the way I see fit. Cavil and I are getting married. You are all expected to attend the ceremony. Now leave." Kara stood, frozen in her mother's room. "Leave!" Ellen cried sharply. One by one, her children filed out the door, leaving their mother with their cousin in her private chambers. The twisting of revulsion and sorrow in Kara's gut kept her awake all night.

* * *

Lee stared at the Cylon prisoner. She was an impressive fighter. It had taken five of his father's soldiers to capture her and get her into the holding cell. Her shirt had been practically torn off at the sleeve and Lee could see the ink marring her arm. It was a large, black wing, the symbol that the ruling family of Cylon marked their children with when they came of age. "Princess," Lee said coldly.

The Cylon glared at him. "We have no titles."

"Fine," Lee said. "Cylon, you won't be harmed. You are not among those who murdered my brother. My father has ordered your continued captivity, but I will do my best to see that you are treated fairly."

She snorted. "And what is fair treatment for a Cylon in the hands of a Galctican?"

Lee moved closer to the cell and spoke evenly, "Fair treatment is ensuring that you are not touched, that you have food and clean clothes and are as comfortable as a prisoner of war can be."

"What war?" she asked, "Cylon and Galactica have not been officially at war in thirty years. The border skirmishes hardly count."

Lee's face hardened as he thought of his brother, lost to an unexpected Cylon raid along the border not two days before. "My brother was killed and you were captured in such skirmishes. Do you really think either event would go unnoticed?" The Cylon looked shell shocked. "Your people have declared war, beat my father to it by minutes. But we did sign the Delphi Convention years ago, and you are protected by those guidelines." The prisoner did not look convinced, but Lee could not bring himself to care.

He left the prison located in the basement of Karl's estate and wearily climbed the stairs. His father would no doubt kill the Cylon prisoner in a large public demonstration if he got anywhere near her, but Lee did not equate justice with revenge, and, no matter how much he wished that spilling the blood of the woman in the cell would make him forget the ache that was his brother's absence, he knew that the act would be as meaningless to him as Zak's death was to her.

"Thanks, Karl," Lee said when he faced his cousin in the entry hall.

"Are you sure you don’t need me to come with you?" Karl asked, clapping a large hand on Lee's shoulder.

"I feel better knowing that you're here to watch after the prisoner. I didn’t like the way some of those border guards were looking at her."

Karl nodded. "I'll keep an eye on them and find a trustworthy person to make sure she eats and I will see you in a few days." Karl did not clarify that it would be for Zak's funeral for which Lee was immensely grateful.

"See you soon." He shook Karl's hand and walked out the door. He mounted his horse in the bright sunlight and purposely did not look at the glass hearse holding his brother's body as he began the long ride towards the capital city, his grief stricken father, and a life without Zak.

* * *

She was late. So frakking late.

Kara scrambled over boulders and tree trunks trying to get to the family's temple in the woods. She had been sparring with one of her mother's body guards having found that the only time she wasn't actively thinking about her dead father or missing sister or her mother's new husband was when she had sweat rolling down her face and the ringing of swords in her ears. But today was not the day to get lost in physical aches.

She and her brothers and sisters had voted yesterday afternoon to disown Cavil and their mother from the family. It had not been an easy decision to make, but the country had been sliding into a dictatorship in the past month and Ellen, the woman who had taught her children to value the committee vote, had done nothing to stop it. Cavil had discontinued the daily voting sessions and Kara's mother had remained in her rooms, all fight drained out of her, a shell after the loss of her love and her child. It was something that Kara would never have dreamt possible. Yet when her turn came, Kara had used the formal royal plural and voted along with the rest of her siblings: _"We agree."_ All that was left now was to pray to their God that they would be forgiven and that their father, ensconced in paradise, would understand. The announcement would be made in the morning.

Kara burst into the clearing, branches catching at the traditional white, arm-bearing tunic, meant to display the symbol of her family, the single wing. Panting, she sprinted to the door of the temple, but pulled up short when she saw Cavil standing in the middle of the circle of her brothers and sisters. She watched him raise his arms, heard him chant and gasped when the arms of her family began glowing, feathers sprouting out of their wing tattoos. Kara was frozen by the transformation in front of her as, one by one they turned into swans and few out the door over her head.

Cavil turned to watch his cousins fly away and locked eyes with Kara, standing in the threshold. Kara was a fighter by nature, but in this place, at this time, she would lose the battle, turn into a bird before she got close enough to run him through with her sword and then there would be no one left to save her family. So Kara turned and she ran, confident that her knowledge of the woods was better than Cavil's, who had spent most of his childhood studying the magical arts in his father's basement. She could hear no sign of pursuit, but the blood was pounding in her ears, so she dared not trust them.

Kara didn’t know how long she fled. She ran until she couldn't run any farther and then walked until she collapsed in exhaustion, sleeping fitfully on the forest floor. When she woke up again, she recognized where she was, on the outskirts of the border town her sister had been kidnapped from. She smelled the salt from the nearby sea and made her way carefully to the shore, right up to the water line. It was a rocky, craggy place with harsh tides and ripping winds. She removed her boots and let the cold water swirl around her swollen, aching feet. 

She walked slowly down the beach, until she reached the distinctive formation of rocks that marked the border between Cylon and Galactica, deliberately thinking in the practicalities of survival, ignoring the insistent voice in her head telling her that she was alone, that there was no one left to care if she survived or not. No one ever came here. There was a cave in the rocks and Kara climbed out of the surf to explore it. It was more of a deep hollowing than an underground lair and the sand was bone dry so Kara presumed that the tide didn't rise this high. It was near enough to the village in case of an emergency, and Kara knew that a fresh water river ran not half a mile from this spot. It would do for the time being, until Kara could come up with a plan. She walked back outside. The sun would be setting soon, behind the rocks. Then she would be able to sneak into the town and steal some food and supplies.

The rush of wings distracted her as the sun hit the horizon and six swans sailed into the cave. Kara ran in after them to see them transform into her brothers and sisters. She tried to hug every one of them, but Caprica was firm. "Kara, we don’t have time, we need to talk. There is a way to free us from this curse."

"What is it?" Kara asked, "I'll do anything."

"Don't promise so quickly, little sister," Doral said sadly. "You will have to remain silent for six years, not utter a sound, not communicate through writing, and in that time, make each of us a shirt out of starwort."

"Sew?" Kara said blankly. "I can’t sew."

"It doesn’t have to beautiful," D'Anna assured her. "Just something with a neck hole and two arms holes. If you decide to do this, six years is a long enough time to learn how to learn just about anything."

"But don't feel obligated," Simon said, walking over to Kara. He clasped her shoulders in his hands and looked straight into her eyes. "This is a dangerous and impossible thing we ask of you."

Kara put her hands on Simon's, "You are all I have left," she said. "You are my brother—of course I will do this for you. For all of you."

Simon nodded, and one by one Kara's brothers and sisters came forward to kiss her forehead. "We are given fifteen minutes in our human forms every evening at sunset," Galen said. "We will come to you as often as we can, but don't want to draw attention to your hiding place."

Kara nodded, an odd combination of trepidation and determination in her heart. This was not her kind of mission. No bad guys to fight, no ass to kick, but at least she could do something to save them. "So when does this start?" Kara asked as they lined up in front of her, preparing to turn back into birds.

"Right after we leave," Leoben said sadly.

Kara nodded. "I can do it. I promise you that I will set you free."

"God's blessings on you, little sister," Caprica said. "May He protect and guide you. And our thanks and love be with you as well." She pulled Kara into one last hug and Kara felt the energy shimmering around her as her sister's arms turned into wings. She fought the urge to scream into the dusk as she watched them fly away from her, leaving her with nothing but her own thoughts for company.  


**Two Years Later**

"That is against the Delphi Convention!" Lee said sharply, slapping his hands down on the table and pushing up to a standing position. "You can’t just torture and execute prisoners of war."

His step-mother, Laura, looked back at him coolly. "I will do whatever I have to do to keep our people safe—something that you are apparently incapable of."

"How is assassinating a Cylon royal keeping anyone safe?" He demanded through gritted teeth.

"You forget how they murdered your brother—"

"I forget nothing," Lee spat at the queen. "I will not allow you to use Zak's name as a rallying cry for immoral and illegal practices like you do with your religion."

"You won’t _allow me_?" Laura rose, fire in her eyes. " _You_ won’t allow me. One of the nice things about being queen is that you don’t have to answer to anyone." Lee's jaw clenched. He breathed through his nose, keeping his lips pressed tightly together and walked out of the conference room without another glance at Laura. Just outside of the door, he leaned against the wall and pressed his palms against his eyes. He briefly contemplated going to his father, the only person in Galactica with equal authority to the queen's but dismissed it immediately. She'd play him, as always. Play the Zak card, tell him that Lee was too soft and was incapable of doing the smart thing. And at that moment, he had bigger problems.

Lee dropped his hands and strode quickly to his room. He pulled out enough clothes to last a couple of days, slid his broadsword into its harness and jogged to the stables. He saddled his horse, Viper, and rode out. It was a day's journey to Karl's and Lee needed to get there fast. He had to tell Karl that the queen was planning on publicly executing his wife, the Cylon prisoner, Sharon.

The first time Lee had seen his cousin, his best friend, locked in an embrace with the Cylon, he had very nearly run them both through with his sword, the betrayal had been so burning and bone deep. He had held his blade tip poised against the Cylon's heart while Karl had put his dagger against Lee's throat. "Lee," Karl had said desperately. "Lee, don’t do anything stupid. I love her."

Lee's fingers had gone numb and he had dropped his sword, scratching Sharon's chest. He had backed away slowly not knowing where to look, how to act. Not knowing what to do.

"Lee—" Karl had started toward him, distress in his eyes, but it was Sharon who had held him back, Sharon who had stepped in front of Karl and looked at Lee with eyes full of sympathy and pleading.

"Lee," she had said softly. "You mean more to him than anyone in the world, maybe more than me. Don’t make him choose." And Lee had stood still, remained silent, and listened to their story. How they had fallen in love through iron bars, how the differences between them seemed so trivial when compared to their similarities. He had not acknowledged them that day, had ridden to a nearby inn and stayed there the night, trying to realign his world, but in the end, he had accepted Karl's love for Sharon and even Sharon's love for Karl. He had become friends with the Cylon, had ridden over the border to find a monotheistic priest and borne witness to their union. And now Sharon was pregnant and the queen wanted to burn her at the stake.

As Lee entered Karl's town, he began to feel a tugging, an undertow telling him that things were not right. There was a nearly unearthly silence and all the doors were shut. He urged Viper to pick up the pace towards Karl's home, and there in the courtyard he saw his cousin lying motionless on the ground, blood on his face, and a heavily pregnant Sharon being dragged bodily into a prison wagon, trying desperately to get to Karl.

" _What is the meaning of this?_ " Lee roared. He knew exactly what the meaning of this was, had argued with the queen too long over a game already in play, a game he couldn’t win outright, but could maybe bluff to buy time.

"Your Highness," the officer in charge walked over to Lee and saluted. "We are here to escort the Cylon prisoner to the capital, by order of Queen Laura."

"And under whose authority did you injure my cousin?" Lee spoke with deadly, quiet calm and was gratified to see the officer take an involuntary step back.

"He tried to stop us—"

"So you felt that it was appropriate to harm a member of the royal family?" Lee snarled. "Go. And leave the prisoner here."

"My orders are very specific—"

"They are," Lee nodded. "I just ordered you to get the frak out of my sight and to stop manhandling a pregnant woman. You are dismissed, Captain." The officer opened his mouth to protest. "You. Are. Dismissed," Lee annunciated before turning his back deliberately and walking over to the wagon, taking Sharon's hand to help her out of the back. He grasped her arm firmly and marched her into the house, past the muttering, exiting soldiers and into the empty sitting room. "I'll check on Karl. You stay inside."

"Lee—" Sharon began, stubborn determination mixing in with her concern.

"Sharon, we are on the edge of all three of us being executed as enemies of the state for that little stunt I just pulled, so do as I say and stay put. Alright?" Lee softened his tone. "There's no time for this right now. Let me get Karl in here and we'll figure out what to do next. Now go sit down, you're making me nervous." He pressed a quick kiss to Sharon's temple before running out to Karl's side.

_Blood on the ground. Zak not moving_. Lee blinked and dropped next to his cousin, who was thankfully stirring. "It's okay, Karl," Lee said soothingly, running questing fingers over Karl's head and feeling a sizeable and sticky bump on the crown. "Did they get you anywhere else?" He removed his dagger from his boot and sliced open Karl's shirt. Nothing noticeable, just the beginnings of some impressive bruises. He pressed against Karl's ribs. "Nothing broken here. Can you move?"

"Sharon—" Karl gasped out as Lee helped him to a sitting position.

"She's fine. Inside," Lee said. "And we need to get you in there too. We are utterly frakked, my friend." He winced along with Karl as the larger man leaned heavily on him, staggering forward toward the door of the mansion. "Laura's decided to publicly execute Sharon, you just had to be subdued so the soldiers could get to her, so I'm guessing that cat's out of the bag, and I just dismissed the soldiers, took charge of the prisoner and essentially countermanded the queen's direct orders."

"Shit," Karl said.

"Yeah," Lee agreed. He helped Karl into the sitting room. Sharon leapt to her feet, ignoring Lee's groan of exasperation, "Gods! You are a million months pregnant and _traumatized_ , for frak's sake!" and ran to her husband, wrapping her arms around him. Karl buried his face in her hair and they whispered reassurances to each other as Lee looked on nervously. "Okay," he cleared his throat. "Okay! Please, sit down, for my sanity if not for your safety." They sat carefully, pressed close together on a sofa and Lee summarized the situation.

"We don’t have much time, if any at all," Karl said. "If I know Laura, she'll be here soon with her circle of scribes so she can triumphantly lead the Cylon to the town center." He tightened his arm around Sharon. He looked up at Lee who was pacing the room. "There's no where to go in this kingdom that's safe from her spies."

"There might be some places in Cylon," Sharon said bleakly. "No one is looking for me, my brothers and sisters are gone, probably dead, Mom's married my frakking cousin, there's a war." Lee and Karl had done their best to keep Sharon abreast of the known situation in Cylon from what limited intel reports they received. Sometimes Lee thought that the three of them got along so well because there wasn't anyone else left for them to get along with.

"So," Karl said. "Just the three of us against the world."

Sharon directed a small smile at Lee and laced her hand through her husband's. "Per usual," she said.

Lee exhaled. "Alright, top of your head, Sharon, where do you think would be safe in Cylon?"

"Ironically, pretty near to the place I got captured," Sharon answered. "Right there on the coast, where the mountains meet the sea is very deserted. Or it least it was a couple years ago." 

Karl looked back at his cousin. "Lee?"

"I don’t have anything better that I can think of. Go get your stuff together. We need to move now." Lee walked over to the sofa, grasped Karl's wrist with one hand and Sharon's arm with the other and heaved, pulling them up into a standing position. He evaded their attempts to hug him and pushed them out of the room before flopping onto a big armchair, trying to work the logistics of their next move out in his mind.

The sound of hooves clattering in the courtyard chilled him to the bone, sent dread racing down his spine. He stood and deliberately made his way to the hall, toward the main door, a glance over his shoulder revealed a fierce eyed Sharon and a steel-jawed Karl on the landing. "Get out of here," Lee said.

"No," Karl shot back.

"If we leave, Laura will arrest you for aiding and abetting," Sharon added.

Lee shook his head in frustration, "They are going to get _all_ of us if you don’t go."

Karl shrugged. "Then they get all of us." The knock on the door that reverberated up to the ceiling interrupted further debate. Lee sent one final, furious look at his cousin and opened the door to the queen of Galactica.

"Your Majesty," he said, sketching a mocking little bow to his step-mother who was accompanied by the ever present body guards and town scribes and criers.

"Leland, I hear you've been confusing my soldiers by giving orders contrary to my own."

"My apologies, Madame," Lee said. "I didn't think that your orders included assaulting a member of the royal family and a pregnant woman. Had I known those were your instructions, I would have, by all means, stood aside."

Laura's lips tightened. "I ordered the transport of a Cylon prisoner."

"And I stopped it when the officer could not control his men," Lee said pleasantly. "I'll be happy to transport the prisoner for you. As soon as she has given birth and is able to travel without danger to herself or her child."

"How. . . chivalrous of you, Lee. Thank you." Laura said sweetly, eyes hard. "It is, however, completely unnecessary. I have found a local mid-wife who will sit with her on her journey. In the meantime," she pushed past Lee and into the door, "Prince Karl, you are under arrest for providing aid and comfort to the enemy," she paused, lip curling in disgust, "and for getting said enemy pregnant." Lee tried to step in front of Laura again, but her body guards pushed him to the side.

"Don't do this," Lee spoke quietly. "Do not do this, Laura." He backtracked at her stare. "Your Majesty, show mercy, I am begging you. Sharon has been nothing but cooperative and Karl is the most loyal of all your subjects."

Laura smiled, and spoke in a ringing tone that echoed through the hallway as soldiers took custody of Karl and Sharon. "Lee, you surprise me. After your brother died in your arms in this very town, blood spilled by Cylons, you would apologize for the Cylon prisoner and her lover," she shook her head, triumph in her eyes. "It's a good thing that I do not forget Prince Zak. It is a good thing that your father and I cherish his memory, as do all loyal Galacticans."

Hatred raged to the surface and flared in Lee's eyes, startling the guards enough that they pulled Lee farther away from their queen. Even the usually unflappable queen looked startled for a moment before smoothing down her pleasant mask. "You may let his Highness go," she addressed her guards. The guards dropped Lee's arms, and he remained obediently still, mind spinning over every possibility as Laura began walking out of the house. He watched in painful helplessness as Sharon and Karl were dragged down the stairs.

"Son of a—" Lee as startled out of his thoughts by the guard's swearing, looking in confusion at the puddle of water at Sharon's feet before his eyes closed in frustrated despair.

"Your Majesty," he called calmly. "I hope that midwife is nearby because the prisoner is going into labor."

* * *

Lee sat in the sitting room next to Karl, who had been cuffed to the chair. He had no idea how much time had passed. Could not even fathom how they were going to get out of this mess when the midwife hesitantly entered the room. Lee and Karl stood. "I'm sorry," she began.

"No," Karl said, and Lee moved to put a hand on his shoulder, his own gut clenching.

"She was a girl, but she was stillborn."

"No," Karl whispered, tears in his eyes and Lee tightened his grip. "How is Sharon?"

"She's fine," the woman said.

In tragedy, Lee found his solution. "Guard!" and the man who had been guarding the entrance hall came in.

"Your Highness?"

"Release the prisoner so that he can go to his wife."

The guard began to protest. "Where the hell is he going to go, soldier?" Lee demanded. "He just lost his child. I will go with him." Still the guard hesitated. "You may tell the queen as soon as you unlock his chain if you wish," he said dismissively. "She's at the mayor's estate, I believe." The guard looked relieved and unlocked Karl from the chair.

"Quickly, quickly," Lee muttered under his breath to his shocked cousin as they climbed the stairs. Lee jerked his head and the guards at the bedroom door stood aside and closed the door deliberately in front of them. "I'm sorry," he said, moving quickly to the other side of the bed. Karl and Sharon were weeping in each other's arms. "I'm so, so sorry, but this is the only chance we have."

"What the frak are you talking about, Lee?" Karl rasped, tears on his cheeks.

"Remember that passageway in the closet that leads out to the stables, the one that Zak used to use to sneak the mayor's daughter in here?" Karl's eyes lit up in recognition. "I can’t believe I have to do this to you now, but it is the only way. It's dark, minimal guards. . ."

"Sharon?" Karl asked.

"I heard," she said dully. "I don’t know how well I can walk."

"I'll carry you," Karl said, picking her up. Lee was already grabbing towels, as many as he could find, random articles of clothing, matches and a candle. "What are you doing?"

"I have no idea," Lee said helplessly, "I—she just gave birth and—I don’t know."

"It's okay," Sharon said. She sounded so defeated. "You have plenty. Let's go." Lee dove head first into the closet, pushing shoes away and rolling up the rug. He opened the trap door and lowered himself in. Fortunately, it was large enough for a tall man to stand. With a little luck, they would be out of the mansion by the time Laura got back and over the Cylon border in a couple of hours. Karl lowered his wife into the passageway and Lee held Sharon for the seconds it took for Karl to close the closet and drop into the passageway. He reached up and slammed the trap door shut behind them and took his wife back into his arms immediately. Lee lit the candle and peered at the walls, moving until he found what he was looking for. He lit the torch and pulled it out of its sconce, blowing out the candle and tucking it into his pocket.

They didn’t speak, just moved down stairs and several hundred yards to the end of the passage. Lee took a deep breath and opened the door in front of him. The stables were dark, and he sighed in relief. He turned to Karl. "Horses? I think they'll bring too much attention, but can you-"

"I'll carry her," Karl affirmed, kissing his wife's head.

Lee briefly touched Sharon's cheek. "Sharon?"

"I'm alright, Lee."

"Okay. In all of the confusion, I left my sword on Viper's saddle. I'll grab that and we'll go." They moved quietly out into the stables. Lee found his horse. He had ordered them to stable Viper in the confusion and he was glad to see that they had taken good care of him. "Hey, boy," Lee spoke softly, giving Sharon the torch to hold. "Where did they put my stuff?" He saw his bags in the corner and grabbed his sword. "I'll be back soon," he assured Viper, stroking his nose before leaving his stall. Lee slid the harness onto his back so that his sword hilt rode over his left shoulder and took the torch back from Sharon, blowing it out to keep them obscured in darkness. "Let's go."

They moved out, keeping off the streets and away from street lanterns, out of the village and into the night.

* * *

Kara had reason to know that a person could get used to anything. Loneliness, hunger, sewing, never speaking or laughing, which had turned out to be the easiest part because there was no one to speak to and nothing to laugh about. She wasn't even halfway done either. Kara threw the shirt she was trying to sew out of the prickly starwort flowers against the wall of her cave and poked at her fire a little. The boredom though; she never got used to that. Living day after day in a cave by the sea. Going to the river for water, scavenging for berries, fishing, sewing, practicing her fencing with an invisible partner. Every now and then seeing a brother or a sister for fifteen minutes as the sun set. She knew they were around though. She had seen the feathers and flashes of white. They were watching as best they could.

Kara could see glimpses of the full moon in a clear sky, so she rose, dusting her hands off on her pants, and walked out to enjoy the breeze. A sudden movement caught her peripheral vision and she saw figures moving toward her from the Galactica side of the border. She didn’t think that they had seen her yet, so she ducked back into the cave, taking her sword in hand and watching intently. As they crossed her line of vision, Kara felt the breath catch in her throat. Two men. And the big one was carrying her sister, Sharon. The moon was bright enough that she was positive it was her.

Kara felt the rage rise, welcomed the flood surging from the never ending blandness of the monastic existence that was her life. She burst out of the cave, running over the soft sand with her sword raised high. The big one blurted in surprise, but the smaller man silently and quickly drew his sword from where it rode above his shoulder and whirled into her, raising his weapon in time to counter her sharp downward blow. Kara bared her teeth in a feral grin. She had been looking for a fight and appeared to have found it.

Not wasting any time, she disengaged their swords and moved forward aggressively. He assumed a defensive stance, but not a truly defensive attitude, she noted, parrying her thrusts while observing her style. They moved down the beach, practically racing to the surer footing of wet sand, and Kara felt the cold water of the ocean lapping at her bare toes as she spun into a crouch, whipping her blade along with her to try to take out the man's knees. He jumped over her swing and countered with an underhanded slice that caught along the back of her thigh, the slight sting signaling first blood.

Kara's heart pounded with exertion and exhilaration. The stakes were high, but God, she was enjoying this, living again at last. Her opponent began the familiar strong wrist roll, designed to strip the blade from her hand, but she countered forcefully, sliding their blades together in one long rasping stroke, forcing them in closer to each other as their weapons met and held for a suspended moment. She caught her bottom lip in her teeth at the sudden darkening of his eyes as her breasts brushed against his chest, and then he was spinning off her, using her sword as an anchor to push away, feinting slightly and countering her blow with a barely quick enough flick.

The clanging and scraping of steel catching steel played in counterpoint to the relentless surf, the flash of metal in the moonlight and a worthy opponent's appreciative eyes. The encouraging yells of her sister. "Kara!" He got in close enough to try to hook her knee with his in an attempt to bring her down and she almost forgot herself and laughed as her sword slipped easily through his guard and slid down his ribs in a teasing, shallow cut before he swore and kicked her away with a foot to her stomach. "Kara!" She staggered backwards from the impact but then flipped her weapon, changing her grip, and brought the pommel down hard on his shoulder, something that she knew from experience would send a numbing shock down his arm to his fingers before dancing away. "Kara! Lee! Stop!"

Kara moved back and down into a defensive crouch, noting that her enemy did the same, eyes never leaving hers. "Kara, is that you?" She watched as the larger man slowly carried her sister into her line of sight and set her gently down, keeping a protective hand on the small of her back. "Oh my God, Kara, I thought you were dead! I thought all of you were dead," Sharon sobbed out and, heedless of the sword in Kara's hand, wrapped her arms around her.

Kara wanted to ask what the hell was going on, wanted to explain what she was doing so far from home and why they had all disappeared, but she couldn't, so she just held Sharon as tight as she could with one arm.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Sharon asked abruptly. Kara shook her head in apology, eyes pleading. "You can't talk?" Kara nodded, paused with a helpless shrug. This was an impossible situation to describe, even if she had been allowed to. "Okay," Sharon said, sliding her hand over her little sister's hair. "Okay." She seemed to wobble on her feet and Kara looked at her more closely. She looked different, weak. _Pregnant_. She surged back, bringing her sword up again, attempting to push Sharon behind her as she moved. Her opponent came forward to engage before Sharon spoke again. "I swear to God I am not in the mood to deal with this right now. Kara! Lee! Drop your swords!"

Kara watched in amazement as the man she had been fighting, Lee, tightened his lips but obeyed. "Sharon, you need to sit down" the big one spoke with such tenderness that she blinked.

"You do too, Karl, you've been carrying me for hours," Sharon answered. And the man named Karl reached out his hand as he sat in the sand. Sharon walked gingerly over to him and let him pull her down into her lap. "Kara, this is Karl, my husband. Karl, this is Kara, my sister. And the man you were trying to kill is Lee, Karl's cousin and my friend." Kara's eyes bugged out. _Husband_? A Galactican husband. Clearly she was not the only one with a tale to tell. Her instinct was still to pull her sister away from the hulking man and his observant cousin, but Sharon. . . Kara trusted Sharon, and there was a larger part of her that was so tired of having no one to rely on but herself.

"Nice to meet you," Karl said affably but wearily. Lee merely nodded briefly, tilting his head in consideration, eyes still locked on her. Kara didn’t think they had ever moved from her since they began their fight. A strong man, she decided, one who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and didn’t trust easily. She found herself smiling at a kindred spirit. Lee's eyebrows raised in response.

"Is there somewhere close we can bring your sister? Somewhere safe where she can rest?" Lee asked and Kara nodded and motioned to cave, the light from her fire could be seen flickering inside. Lee hesitated, looking at Karl and Sharon in concern. "Your sister had a baby today, but she was stillborn."

"Hera," Sharon said softly. "Her name was Hera." Kara's heart cracked for her sister. And she finally let go of the sword and moved in close to clutch her hand, hoping that Sharon knew just how sorry she was.

"Karl," Lee said softly. "Do you want to bring Sharon into the cave? I can fill Kara in. Then I'm going to go back to your place."

"Are you out of your frakking mind?" Karl asked. "Laura knows that you helped us."

"Yeah, but she can’t prove it," Lee replied. "I'll tell her that it was an error in judgment to let you see Sharon; that we struggled when I realized your plan, that I followed you as best I could but lost you in the dark. It would take a heck of a lot of proof for her to feel safe accusing me directly of treason. I can’t leave Galactica to the queen's mercy. You know that. It's better if I go back."

"Not better for you," Karl said stubbornly.

"I can bring you supplies, information, keep you safe. Plus," Lee said trying for lightness, "then I can sleep in a real bed."

"Princess," Karl said, unsmiling, but Kara could see that he was resigned to play the part that his cousin needed him to.

Lee shrugged, "Can I help it if I'm accustomed to the finer things in life?" He and Kara helped Sharon up and then Lee pulled Karl to his feet. "Take care of her. And yourself," he said as Karl hugged him. "I'll be back inside of a week I promise." He squeezed Sharon's hands before Karl carried her into warm shelter. "Your sister will be in soon," he assured her.

Kara was left alone with Lee on the beach, watching the couple make their slow way into the cave. "He loves her," Lee said and she turned to meet his earnest gaze. "And yeah, he knows she's a Cylon, but he loves her anyway." Kara felt her heart stutter unexpectedly at the intensity in the eyes of a man who had been trying to kill her mere minutes before. She watched him swallow tightly, felt the heat rise between them and she felt her lips curving hesitantly up before she bit her lip and looked away.

"I—hardly know where to begin," Lee said. He walked wearily over to pick up his sword and slid it into the scabbard, shrugging off the harness and dropping it unceremoniously on the beach. He slumped to the sand, exhaustion apparent in every clumsy move, and stretched out on his back with a bone deep sigh. His shirt rode up, showing a strip of muscled torso as well as the thin cut that Kara had caused. She shivered, seeing her mark on him, hand reaching automatically for the slice on the back of her thigh. Lee frowned in concern, forehead wrinkling. He rolled up onto his elbows. "Did I hurt you? I forgot." Kara rolled her eyes and shook her head, dropping to the sand next to him, gesturing for him to continue. Lee considered her a long moment. "I bet that you have quite a story to tell." Kara shrugged a single shoulder, dropping his gaze. "Maybe someday," Lee said softly and Kara rolled her head sideways to look at him. He lay heavily back onto the ground again as if he just couldn’t prop himself up anymore, linking his hands behind his head and holding her gaze. Brief shyness flickered in his eyes and Kara watched as he visibly pulled into himself before turning his head to contemplate the stars.

Lee started and stopped a couple of times, but in the end, he began the story with his brother's death and ended it with a moonlit sword fight. Kara listened intently to Lee's nearly inflectionless telling of such a personal accounting for all involved, sitting with her arms around her knees, looking out onto the ocean. She was relived to be listening to another human being and tremendously grateful that God had seen fit to send Karl and Lee into her sister's life. She found herself inching closer, trying to offer some comfort in presence if not in words.

Kara started at the soft touch on the back of her thigh and turned her head to watch Lee trace a single finger up the slice in her pants, over the cut he had inflicted. "I have to go," he said throatily, sitting up. Kara's face fell. "Hey," he said, sounding surprised and pleased. "I'll be back. You have my cousin in your cave. Is there anything you need or want?" Kara considered then mimed painting, dipping an imaginary brush into an imagery blob of paint and smearing it around an imaginary canvass. Lee grinned, turning his face charming and young. "A pony?" Kara pushed his shoulder. "Alright, painting stuff. Anything else?" Kara scowled, but pretended to sew. "Thread? A needle?" She nodded and then shook her head to his further inquiries. There was nothing else she could think of. She had been living without for so long.

Lee closed his eyes and inhaled deeply as if centering himself before pushing off the ground. He grabbed his sword and buckled his harness back on, shrugging into it. Then he held out a hand to Kara. She took it, allowed him to pull her up. They stood for a too long moment, a soft smile on Lee's face that she felt echoed on her own. "It was very nice to meet you Kara," he said finally. She tilted her head and smiled wider squeezing his hand lightly. He pulled his hand back slowly, almost reluctantly, long enough that the tips of his fingers lingered against the tips of hers. The smile slid from his face and Kara could almost see the responsibility layering itself back onto his body. With a shake of his head he turned and walked back toward Galactica. Kara watched Lee with a heavy heart until he disappeared into the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my beta, workerbee73, a good egg.

It was two weeks before Lee felt that it was safe enough to go back to the beach without arousing suspicion. He had walked into a firestorm of thinly veiled accusations, but in the end there was no real proof of his involvement in the disappearance of the Cylon prisoner. Still, Lee bided his time. He collected blankets and pillows and clothes and paint and thread and anything he could think of that could be easily transported on Viper. He moved into Karl's estate, ostensibly to provide a royal presence near a lightly guarded border, but mainly to keep out of Laura's line of sight and be as close as possible to his cousin in case of an emergency. Most importantly, he ensured that his court allies were in place and ready to pass him information on the daily council meetings he would no longer be attending. 

Slinging his bags onto Viper's back and riding out of Karl's stables toward the coast, Lee felt the trepidation rising in him. He had been so busy trying to get everything in order so that he could get back that he had hardly thought about what he'd find when he got there. He knew that all three of the people he had left behind were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but it didn’t stop him from worrying about them. About Karl and Sharon's loss and how they were surviving in a cave by the sea. And about Sharon's silent sister with her wicked passata-sotto, guarded eyes and disarming smile.

He dismounted when he reached the rocks at the border, took off his boots and wiggled his toes in the sand. Lee sighed and tipped his head back to feel the sun on his face and led Viper down toward the water. He was startled by the sound of pounding feet and had just enough time to pull the sword from his back to meet Kara's wild swing. He laughed loudly, delighted to see her, and slid the blades so that they were pressed together vertically between them, bodies close. 

"This seems familiar," he said with a smile, his awareness narrowed to the beautiful woman in front of him. 

The grin on her face widened at his focused gaze and she stepped back to give his weapon a playful tap with hers before dropping it to the ground and holding both hands out to Viper. He sniffed her, soft black nose snuffling at her palms. Kara looked enchanted, leaning in to rest her cheek on the horse's and Lee found himself charmed by the picture they made. She was something alright. Lee resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the blonde strands of hair caught in Viper's sleek, black fur. Instead, he slid his hand along his horse's neck and reached for his full saddle bags. "Is my cousin around here anywhere? I come bearing gifts." He showed a paint brush to Kara. "I couldn’t get any canvases this time, but maybe you can spruce up your cave." Kara smiled at him as she ran her hands up and down Viper's neck the big animal practically purring at the attention.

"Oh God," Sharon's voice floated down to him. "You brought my sister a horse. You'll never see him again."

Lee walked around Viper. "Over my dead body," he said and pulled his friend into a hug.

"She just swung a sword at you. Again. I think that can be arranged," Sharon laughed.

"I thought that meant she liked me," Lee said as he released Sharon from his embrace but moved to grasp her fingers. "How are you doing?" he asked quietly.

Sharon squeezed his hands. "I'm okay."

He nodded and then found himself gasping for air as tree trunk arms encircled him from behind. "Where the frak have you been?" Karl demanded, jiggling Lee up and down a little. There was real worry in his voice so even as Lee squeaked in protest he patted his cousin's arms. It was nice to have someone who worried about him, even if he showed it by trying to squeeze the life out of him. Karl spun Lee around and let him go. "Gods, Lee! There was no way to know if anything had happened to you."

"Everything's fine," Lee said, but his straightforward pleasure of a few moments ago was marred as the reality of the situation closed in around him. "I can't stay, but I brought you some things."

"Can't stay?" 

"I can't draw attention to you through my absence—"

"Frak that!" Karl swore. "You'll at least stay for dinner before you ride back."

"Fine," Lee held up his hands in capitulation. "That way I can let you know what's going on back home and you can tell me how living with the in-laws is." He felt a sharp flick to the back of his neck and turned to see Kara with his bags over her shoulders. He reached out to take one from her, but she ignored him and started walking, she jerked her head toward the cave and Lee found his eyes glued to her backside as he followed her.

"Speaking of my in-law. . ."

"Shut up, Karl."

 

* * *

 

Lee sat in silence in the soft sand, waiting for Kara. He knew she wouldn’t spend the night in Karl and Sharon's more comfortable surroundings and knew of nowhere else she would be so late at night. It had taken a few months and several visits with supplies from Lee, and all of their hard labor, but Sharon and Karl finally had their small cottage. It was built further inland, closer to the river. 

It had been hours before he had been able to slip out of the stables tonight. He was being followed more closely every day and he was desperately worried that his self-indulgence in seeing his cousin—seeing her—as often as he did was going to cost them all. 

He closed his eyes and let the chill of the breeze wash over him as he breathed in the sharp salt air. It was the only place left for him, this beach. The part of Lee that had laughed with Zak had been shriveling up to nothing but duty and honor and cold, empty platitudes until he had met her on this shore and had learned how to laugh again. Not the ironic snorts at his own idiocy or the dutiful chuckles at court dinners, but head back, mouth wide, expression of sheer joy kind of laughter. It was a gift he hadn’t even known he wanted, a comfort he had professed not needing, but it was there, given to him by the mere presence of the quiet Cylon royal. 

Gods, but she was something. Something warm and sad and mysterious and familiar all in the same breath, and he wanted her instinctively. No thought involved, no second guessing that particular fact. Lee knew damn well that it was beyond insane, not to mention doomed—this little fantasy of his, to live in a cave by the sea with the blonde woman who had somehow twisted him around her finger in these past months without saying a word. He had to stop coming to her, stop leading the danger to her doorstep. He had to let Kara and Karl and Sharon live without more threat than they already faced. 

He sat in the dark, gathering the courage to leave. To not come back. To keep them safe.

 

* * *

 

Kara made her way down the path from her sister's newly built cottage to her cave. It was nice to finally have company after years of nobody, and even better to have her sister back. It kept Kara focused on family, on why she was keeping silent and not breaking down and just blurting out everything to the frakking Prince of Galactica, owner of the stubborn jaw and unhappy eyes. He wasn't fooling anyone.

No matter how Lee glossed over the particulars of his life, that resigned misery of his shone through and Kara couldn’t help but respond to it. She suspected that he didn’t share even a quarter of what was going on back in Galactica. Didn't want to even speak of it for fear that Karl, who was constantly worried about his cousin as it was, would tie him up and not let him leave. 

Kara shivered in the chilly night air as she drew near her cave. The days were getting shorter and she was going to have to go hunt down more starwort for the mind numbing project of sewing shirts for birds, something that, despite D'Anna's assurances, was still not something she did well. Or quickly. She still saw them every now and then, but as time had gone by, her siblings had been forced to fly to more hospitable habitats for swans. She missed them.

Kara came to a halt when she saw Viper wandering about near the mouth of her cave. She looked around until she could barely make out whom she assumed to be Lee sitting in the sand several yards away, staring out onto the dark sea. She made her careful way toward him, pausing to give Viper a kiss. She knew he heard her coming but he didn't move, and she wondered for a moment if it was because he knew it was her or just didn’t really care who was approaching him.

She sat down next to him, bumping her shoulder into his. "Hi," Lee said, looking briefly at her. His voice was devoid of emotion. "I brought a ton of thread and needles and a big rug and put them in your cave. I like the painting on your walls. Very colorful." Kara nodded her thanks and then gestured toward the cave. She was cold, even if Lee wasn't, and wanted to get inside and start a fire. 

He followed her, watching silently as she lit some of the lanterns he had brought her a month before. Kara waved him toward the pit she had dug and lined with colorful pillows, the only decently comfortable place to sit other than her bed. 

"I can’t stay," he said softly. Kara stopped poking at her fire and put her hands on her hips. "I've been here awhile and need to get back—I have to leave for the capital first thing in the morning."

Kara, ignored him and turned her attention back to the fire. After stoking the embers into a nice blaze, she walked over to lounge in her pile of pillows, crooking her finger at Lee who sighed but obediently sat. "How are Karl and Sharon doing?" Kara gave a thumbs up and a grin accompanied by an eye roll. "Good," Lee said. "Do they need anything? Do you?" Kara did not like the tone of his voice nor the conversation. She shook her head slowly.

"Okay," Lee said. He paused for a long time before speaking slowly. "I want to run something by you." Kara nodded cautiously. "I think it's best if I don’t—if I don't come back here again." Kara felt her heart clench and began shaking her head. "Please—" Lee said. She threw a pillow at him. "Stop it, Kara." She threw another. He scooted closer and grasped both of her hands. "Stop! This is too dangerous. Laura has me followed all the time. Everything I do and say, everywhere I go—it’s getting harder and harder to get away. I shouldn’t put you in danger like that."

Kara flipped her hands over, gripped Lee's and stared into his bleak eyes. No Lee to spar with on the beach or to smile at when he tried, unsuccessfully, to catch fish in the river. No Lee to just be with. She knew that Karl would go slowly crazy until he ran over the border to rescue his cousin, Sharon not far behind. And she would miss him. The thought made her heart clench. 

"Damn it, Kara! I thought that you of all people would understand. You who say nothing, reveal nothing, show nothing." Kara stared as Lee wrenched his hands free and scrambled angrily to his feet, watching actual emotion playing over his angular face. "You know. You know that there are things that have to be done, things that people like us can do, will do, things that others can't." 

Kara surged to her feet. The helplessness filled her, made her angry and she put both hands on Lee's shoulders and glared as hard as she could. She shook him, then turned him around and pointed at her walls, swirled with color and then stabbed at his chest with her finger. It's what he needed, it's what he had brought her, a swirl of color on an empty stone wall. "I'll figure out how to keep you in paint," Lee said with irritation and Kara brought both hands up to her face and pressed hard in frustration, a silent scream.

She dropped her hands and glared before pushing him hard. He tripped over a pillow and onto his back and Kara promptly straddled him. He looked up at her and she sharply inhaled at the amazement and longing and goddamned resignation she saw in his blue eyes. There was no way to say it. No way to express her concern for him, no way to articulate the desire to just keep him in her cave forever where she could keep an eye on him and make him smile. 

His hands moved up hesitantly to rest on her hips and he smiled a faltering but genuine smile. "Does that mean that you’d miss me?" He asked. Kara leaned down close, eyes searching, hands on either side of his face, and lightly head butted his forehead with hers. She pulled back and rolled off him. "I'd miss you too," he said quietly. "It doesn’t change the fact that this is a stupid risk to take."

He rose and smiled sadly. "If I were strong, I'd say good-bye and wish you a happy life." Kara stood more slowly. He was too strong, and too blind. Unwilling or unable to see what his absence would do to Karl—to all of them. That's why he might leave tonight and never come back. "See you around, Kara," he said, walking backwards as if to memorize her face before turning and striding out of the cave.

Kara found herself panicking a little, needing reassurance that it was truly a see you later instead of a farewell. She stepped quickly after him, taking Lee by the wrist and spinning him to face her. She put both hands on his shoulders and stared hard into his eyes. She slid her hands up his shoulders until they cupped the back of his neck and pulled lightly so that he rested his cheek against her own. For a brief, unexpected moment their eyes closed and a wave of heady weightlessness, of shared burden washed over her. She felt his hands settle lightly on the sides of her face and the ocean breeze flutter her hair, and God, this man was so essential somehow. 

Lee pulled away and Kara looked at him questioningly. "I'll be back," he promised. Kara nodded and touched his cheek lightly as a last attempt to fortify him. 

She watched him efficiently saddle and mount Viper and disappear into the night. Kara turned her face up to the clear moon and prayed for the souls of the living and the dead, for her little lost niece, Hera, her parents and siblings, her brother-in-law and especially for the soul of Lee.

 

* * *

 

"Kara!" Lee called as he walked out onto the shore. She appeared in the mouth of her cave and waved. She looked tired, but Lee was too glad to see her to care. He was still sweating, breathing hard from his fast hike to the border, but he paid no attention to that as he jogged right up to her and pulled her into a hard hug. He felt her freeze at the unexpected embrace even as the tension melted from his body to have her so near, but then she relaxed and brought her arms around him, smoothing a hand down his spine and he felt some of his franticness ease. He pulled his head back so he could see her, drinking her in. 

His visits were coming fewer and farther between because he was spending more and more time at the capital, trying to block Laura's witch hunt as unobtrusively and as often as possible. She had started imprisoning suspected Cylon collaborators based on her so-called religious visions. This morning, Lee had gotten word that two of the people loyal to him in the government had been thrown into the dungeon. He also had received confirmation of a rumor he had caught wind of a couple weeks prior. Sharon and Karl's baby, Hera, was alive. Laura had fostered her out for reasons completely unknown by anyone Lee had spoken with, but she was alive and Lee was determined to find her. 

Kara was frowning at him in concern. She drew a finger down his neck, causing Lee's breath to catch, and showed him his sweat with a questioning eyebrow raise. "I shouldn’t ride Viper here anymore," Lee explained. "They're watching the stables now." Kara closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder briefly before stepping back. Lee reluctantly let her go. "We need to see Karl and Sharon. Now."

She nodded and turned to the path leading up and over the ridge of rocks toward the river and his cousin. Lee followed.

 

* * *

 

Kara held Sharon's hand very tightly. Hera. Alive. A year later. The thought was so astonishing and heart breaking at the same time. Karl and Lee were ignoring the dazed women and engaged in a shouting match, or at least Karl was shouting at Lee.

"I am going after my daughter!"

"They will arrest you in a second if they see you. I will take care of it," Lee spoke with that controlled anger, that condescendingly reasonable tone that always got Kara's hackles up faster than if he had hit her.

"I don't see that it is your decision to make."

"And I don't see how you would consider risking your life when I can just—"

"You!" Karl was actually sputtering now, "Where the hell do you get off lecturing anybody about risking lives when you live in the shadow of your hallucinating, manipulative, psychopath of a stepmother?!"

"I don’t think that she's actually psychopathic—" Lee began.

"Don’t even start!" Karl roared. To his very great credit, in Kara's estimation, Lee shut up. "Lee," Karl said in a quieter, pleading tone of voice. "Lee, I have to do this. You get it. I know you do. If you didn't then Sharon and I would have been dead ten times over by now. There are things that you do for family that you don’t do for anyone else." Karl put his hands on Lee's shoulders and Lee grasped Karl's elbows. "She's my daughter. You don’t let me take care of you, even though I—you know I promised Zak I would. But I am going to take care of her."

Kara was shocked to see tears in Lee's eyes matching Karl's. He nodded, looking firmly at the ground and Karl pulled him into a tight, quick hug. "I don’t know much of anything," Lee said, stepping out from Karl's embrace. "Just rumors and snippets of supposed sightings. Hera has practically turned into a full-scale urban legend."

"Then we follow the clues," Sharon said, letting Kara's hand drop and standing next to her husband. Karl pulled her in front of him and locked his arms around her middle, resting his chin on her head. A wave of loneliness washed over Kara as she watched the three of them, so united in purpose and shared tragedy. She couldn’t share her secret with anyone, not even her sister who, if the world was fair, would have been able to help shoulder the burden.

Lee noticed her though. Lee always noticed. He held out a hand to her in invitation. Kara stood up and walked toward him, hesitantly reaching out, and he hauled her in close. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and Sharon grabbed her hand and, for the first time in a long, long while, Kara felt like she belonged.

 

* * *

 

He was soaked through. Cold and shaking as he scrambled and slid his way down the shore line in the dark, over rocks and severed branches. All he could think about, even when he felt something slice deeply into his left calf, was her. Kara and her don't-frak-with-me snarl and haunted eyes and wild grin. Kara who could undoubtedly take care of herself better than he could, but he was going to try anyhow because Karl and Sharon were still in Galactica looking for their daughter. He wasn't a knight in shining armor, simply was not decent enough for the title, but Lee wouldn't just leave her to the mercy of a storm in a little cave on the sea.

He skidded around the corner and into the cave, water thigh high and swirling around him. "Kara!" he shouted. "Kara!" And there was desperation in his voice, even though she could not, would not, answer him. "Godsdamnit Kara, where are you?" A rock hit the cave wall near his head and he turned in the direction it had been thrown from. "Kara," he choked, and waded through the water to her, flinging aside some floating pillows.

She was holding a candle, shielding it from the onslaught of the splashing, rising tide. Her eyes were wide and searching and she groped around under the water. 

"What are you still doing in here?" Lee asked, tugging on her arm, "The water is rising. We have to go!" She pulled some sodden fabric off her shoulder and shook it at him. "What?" Lee tried to grab it from her hand, but she wouldn’t let go. Kara shook it wildly again and then held up two fingers. "There are two more of those . . . things and you need to find them?" he ventured a guess and Kara practically sagged in relief. "Okay. You get out of here, I'll look." Kara's face took on a mulish tinge in the light of the candle. "Can't you just let me help you? For once? Let me do something for you!" 

Lee hadn't realized he had been shouting until Kara's cold, pruney fingers slid over his mouth and she stepped in close. She grabbed him by the chin and held his head still while she looked straight into his eyes, the determination clear in her face. Lee nodded tightly, and she pinched his chin before handing him her candle. She crouched down in the now waist deep water and felt around, and then she was brandishing a handful of dripping material in each hand raised high over her head in triumph. "Now can we go?" Lee asked. Kara rolled her eyes at him, but she let him take her wrist and pull her back out into the storm.

 

* * *

 

Kara still could not believe that she had left those stupid swan shirts in the cave. When she had seen the tide coming in, the rain pouring down, she had grabbed as many of her things that she could carry and had scurried up to Karl and Sharon's place. When she had gotten the fire started and had settled comfortably in a chair, she had been hit with the realization that she had left her three year's labor—her entire frakking reason for being silent—back in a cave that would shortly be flooded. She had run out without a coat or even her shoes. Thankfully, God had been looking out for her and she had managed to recover the two finished shirts as well as the mostly finished one. Her starwort supply was a loss, but she would get more in the spring—she still had three years left and even as disinterested and unskilled a seamstress as she was, she was sure she could manage to finish by then.

She stumbled slightly over a rock on the steep incline, wincing at the pain in her bare feet, but Lee's hand kept her up, kept her moving in the wind and the torrent of rain. He had come out into the night, braved the storm, apparently run here without a frakking horse—and all for her. The warmth rose in her chest. He knew that Karl and Sharon were gone and he had come for her anyway. He knew that there was shelter to be had, but he had come to check. She was so, so tired of not being able to talk to him, to thank him, to just express some goddamn emotion that couldn’t be encompassed by shrugs and eye rolls. Something that was all about them, Kara and Lee, and nothing about family and duty and honor to country and frakking siblings turned into big, noisy water fowl.

They got to the top of the incline and were racing through the trees and Kara was done. She came to a complete standstill, pulling Lee to a stop with her. "What are you doing?" He shouted over the wind and the pounding of the surf, the rattle of rain on leaves, the crashing of thunder. He put his mouth right next to her ear and spoke with exasperated affection. "Kara—I don’t know if you've noticed but it's raining out here." And she turned her head and kissed him. 

Lee responded instantly, opening his mouth to hers and filling his hands with her ass. She leaned against him as his tongue slid inside, before he abruptly pulled back to look at her, shock juxtaposed with want in his expression. He carefully pushed the dripping strands from her face, smoothing it back until her view was no longer obstructed, just filled with Lee and Lee's eyes and his mouth and—she leaned in again but was stopped by his hands on either side of her head. 

"I can’t do this if you don’t mean it," Lee said, and Kara smiled at him, shaking her head a little at his utter cluelessness before leaning in and kissing his nose. "We shouldn’t do this anyway. Don’t you know that bright shiny futures aren’t for people like us?" She kissed his cheek, his temple, his forehead, eyes, chin, along that jaw line, until he pulled her in tight and ducked his head to bite into her shoulder. "Frak it," he muttered. "I don't care what the right thing is anymore." He backed her up against a nearby tree and positively devoured her mouth as she let her head fall back.

Her hair was caught in the tree trunk, the cold rain was relentless and Lee had her shirt pulled up over her breasts, licking long slow strokes over her nipples and driving her absolutely mad with his hot tongue on her chilled skin. She bit her lip hard because she could not, would not, say his name. Would not ruin three years work, no matter how good it felt to finally have Lee's mouth on her. 

Her hands moved all over him, his chest, his shoulders, back and thighs until she was shaking and so was he. She reached for the front of his pants, fingers clumsy and a little numb from the cold. God, she was freezing to death and burning up all at the same time. She got her hands in and squeezed his length. "Shit! Your hand's cold," he gasped, bringing his head up to kiss her and laughing into her mouth. He tried to slide the sodden pants off her hips, but they clung so much that she pushed him away to totally strip them off herself, throwing her sibling's shirts to the ground from where they had still been wetly plastered to her shoulder. 

Lee stopped breathing. She could see the air leave his body in a whoosh as he looked at her with nothing on her but a strip of shirt caught up under her arms, leaning against a tree with the water dripping down her body, streaming through her hair. She smiled at him. Only his pants were undone, but the material just clung to the angles of him. She crooked a finger at him. He surged forward, taking just enough time to pull her shirt down to protect her back from the rough tree before pushing her up off her feet and against the trunk. Her legs and arms wrapped around him and she locked her eyes with his as they remained suspended in the moment. He was beautiful. Beautiful and entirely hers because she knew his secrets, knew his pain and his temper and loved him anyway. 

She made fists of her hands and pounded them three times on his shoulders. Now. Now. Now. And he slid into her with one long stroke. The sky continued to fall around her, rain muffling their gasps and his muttered endearments. The wind flung sticks and leaves and water at their bodies but it didn’t matter at all. Kara arched back, her hair snagging on bark, face to the sky as Lee moved, welcoming the rain as her body welcomed him. She let go completely, an almost painful release, crashing and wild and freezing and completely, irreversibly taken with the man surrounding her, the man she was surrounding. Lee shuddered against her and she tightened her arms and thighs. Brought her face down to watch the final edges of need and want sliding into contented peace on his face, stark with his hair slicked back. 

They stared at each other before she brought her mouth to his, kissing him gently. He took a shuddering breath. "Kara," he whispered and she smiled as the storm raged around them. 

 

* * *

 

In the end, he had just thrown her over his shoulder and carried her the remaining distance to Sharon and Karl's home. It was deluging water and they had given up on getting her pants back on and, for the first time, he had noticed that she wasn't even wearing shoes. So he had slung her over, her fists pounding weakly at his back. He could feel her body shaking to hold in her laughter which he assumed was the reason he wasn't being beaten to a pulp. He kissed the bare, wriggling hip by his ear, then kissed it again before opening the door and stepping gratefully into the fire warmed room.

He slid her deliberately down his body, reluctant to let go for fear that she would be shortly coming to her senses. Kara grimaced at the sensation of her nearly naked body pressed to cold wet clothes, but she pressed a quick kiss to his lips before breaking free. He took the time to hang the cloth that had been hung over his other shoulder over wooden chairs; her pants and underwear and the three whatevers Kara had risked her life for. He shook them out to reveal misshapen shirts made from flowers and lots of thread. He laid them carefully on the table and frowned, contemplating them until his attention was caught by a completely nude Kara walking toward him, toweling her hair.

He stared at her lines and curves, where tan skin met cream, at muscles built from years of hard labor. She was way too good to be true, and certainly much more than he deserved. She stood before him and pulled the towel off her head, gesturing to his soaking wet clothes still uncomfortably clinging to him. When he made no move to strip, she draped the towel around her neck and began unbuttoning his shirt for him.

Lee put his hand over hers to still them, wanting her to think about what she was doing, what they were doing, but she just raised it to her lips and brushed a kiss over his knuckles, making his heart flutter, and continued on with single-minded intensity. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders and he heard it land with a squelch behind him before his attention was entirely caught by her handing him the towel and reaching for his pants. "Kara." She looked at him, a faint smile on her face and her head tilted. "You don’t have to do this, I can take care of myself." His voice had been more pointed than he had intended, and her mouth was suddenly on his, rough and punishing. 

She pulled back, looking defiant and angry and—hurt, he realized, and she proceeded to strip the pants off him before turning away. He followed her, putting his hands on her shoulders and pulling her back into his body so he could wrap his arms fully around her. He slid his face next to hers. "I'm just not used to being—looked after." She remained rigid against him, but she turned her head a little so that their cheeks brushed. "Please, Kara," he said, pressing kisses down the line of her shoulder, feeling her relax into him. "Don't let me ruin it. I'm really, really good at breaking things."

She deliberately stepped away from him, and he let his fingers linger on the smooth skin of her hips. She took another towel from a nearby chair and rubbed it efficiently over his body before pushing him toward the armchair in front of the fire—a triumph of Karl's foraging in the nearby Cylon village. He collapsed heavily and she climbed onto his lap, squirming until she got comfortable, with her legs dangling over the arm of the chair and arms wrapped firmly around his neck. She pressed her face into his throat and her bare breasts, still chilled, against his bare chest. Lee folded himself around her as much as possible, trying to get them both warm. Her damp hair was spread cold against his neck and chest, and he bundled the length of it up in his hands, twisting it into a single long rope and tying it in a loose knot on her head so that it was off her back and his skin. He kissed her temple. The last of the tension melted from her body and the sporadic shivers stopped altogether. She was asleep. Lee stared into the fire, listening to the storm howl around them, moving his fingers to her neck to feel Kara's pulse, heart beating in slow, measured time, trying to match his own rhythms to hers.

 

* * *

 

Kara drifted slowly awake. She was warm and held secure against Lee's chest. A faint snore made her smile. She lifted her head from his neck, moving slowly so as not to wake him. Judging from the state of the fire, she had only been a sleep for a couple of hours and, as appealing as Lee was, he and the chair were proving to be too hard to sleep on top of. When she tried to extract herself, he just held on tighter, so she kissed his slack mouth. She nipped at it, tugging on his bottom lip with her teeth until he sleepily responded, sighing happily into her. She pulled back to see his eyes, hooded and blinking and damnably blue. He smiled unreservedly at her and Kara slid her fingers over his lips to feel such an open expression.

She pulled gently out of his arms and stood up to stretch, enjoying his eyes on her even as she took in the elegant sprawl of him. She covered her mouth with her hand to fight down the laugh as a certain part of his body took a noted interest. She raised both eyebrows, and he shrugged but flushed a little, not meeting her eyes. Kara grabbed a hand and hauled him up to press against her before deliberately arching her hips into him. 

"You are killing me," he groaned and she pulled him towards the bed, climbing under the blankets and drawing him in with her. Lee rolled half on top of her, propping himself up with one arm as she traced his skin with her fingers. "Are you sure I'm what you want?" he asked seriously.

Kara stilled at the uncertainty in his voice, the resignation creeping back into his expression. She brought her hands up to either side of his face and kissed him as softly as she could with their eyes open. 

 

* * *

 

After he had left her drowsy-eyed and warmly bundled in the cabin with lingering kisses and promises to return soon. After he had walked into the still raging storm in the impossibly small hours of the morning to get back to the estate before dawn. The next time Lee saw Kara was a week and a half later, sewing on the crisp, sunny beach next to Sharon, who appeared to be doing much of the same. The relief at seeing his friend safe collided with the sharp pull in his body at seeing Kara. 

"Good morning," Lee called out, and was gratified to see big smiles on both of their faces.

Sharon scrambled up and jogged lightly forward to throw her arms around him. "It's so good to see you," she whispered in his ear.

"Any luck?" He asked. 

"Just a lot of rumors."

"Before I leave, tell me all of them," Lee said drawing back to look into her face. "We'll find her, Sharon." Sharon nodded and let out a startled yelp as she was pushed out of the way by Kara who promptly kissed Lee full on the mouth, looping her fingers into the front of his pants and tugging him tight against her. "I take it that this is not a secret then?" he asked with amusement as he wrapped his arms around her.

Sharon laughed, "About time you made a move, Kara."

Lee mock glared at her. "Why do you think it was Kara who made the first move?"

"Oh, please," Sharon said in concert with Kara rolling her eyes. 

"Where's Karl?"

"Feeling outnumbered?" Sharon asked. "He's back in the cabin, letting Kara and I do sisterly bonding or something like that." Lee was torn. He really did want to see his cousin, but he still had an armful of Kara and he hadn't seen her in days. Fortunately, Sharon took pity on him. "I have to go do some things around the house—we were gone for awhile. How about you two wander up for lunch in a couple of hours?"

Lee couldn’t remember if he had called out an affirmative before he kissed Kara again, but he waved the concern away as he was tackled onto the ground and surrounded by waves of blonde hair.

 

* * *

 

Some time later, Kara lay flat on her back in the sand. She had pulled her pants back on in deference to the temperature, but was enjoying the feeling of Lee tracing the lines of the tattoo on her arm too much to put her shirt back on. 

"Did you lose a lot when your cave flooded?" Kara shook her head lazily. It really had been astonishing how much had still been in there. It had taken a few days to dry, but she was still pretty set. "Let me know if you need anything, okay?" She opened an eye and raised an eyebrow suggestively. "Give me a minute. Gods, woman, you’re insatiable." She grinned widely and pulled Lee down into a slow, warm kiss.

He pulled back and sat up. "We should probably get dressed and head for the cottage." Kara nodded but didn't move. His rough palm slid down the center of her body, between her breasts to rest heavily on her navel. She opened her eyes and found him staring so hard at her, like she might disappear if he stopped, and she felt the shiver start in the base of her spine until her skin erupted in goose bumps from the sheer force of the need on his face. He frowned at her chilled skin and reached for her shirt and handed it to her. 

She sat up and pulled the shirt over her head and gave an exaggerated pout when he fastened his pants to make him smile, although it was really a shame to cover up that body. He grabbed hold of her hips and kissed her soundly on the side of her neck. "Let's go," he said, stooping to pick up his shirt and pulling it on as they began walking. He laced his fingers through hers and, for a moment, Kara felt decidedly normal.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my beta, workerbee73, smoother of ruffled feathers.

In the months that followed, Karl noticed that there were moments, hour stretches, where he could almost believe that things were good; where he didn’t think about his daughter or the fact that he and his wife were exiled from both of their countries or that his sister-in-law wouldn’t speak and was struggling with a mission known only to herself or that Lee was playing a dangerous game with a willfully blind enemy. Sometimes. Times when Sharon would smile at him over dinner or he watched her laughing as she sparred with her sister on the beach. Times when he saw Kara standing perfectly still along the bank of the river, lip caught between her teeth and roughly hewn spear upraised as she stalked the fat fish or when she'd punch Lee in the shoulder for telling a bad joke, fighting down a smile. Times when he and Lee would be sent out to the garden to do their fair share of the weeding and grumble about the women in their lives or when he'd see his cousin looking at Kara as if she were the answer to every prayer he would never make.

But as the mild winter turned to warm spring, and then to hot summer, he couldn’t avoid thinking about what his baby would look like, how she wouldn't know who he was or recognize Sharon. He couldn't help but notice Kara's increasing frustration at not being able to speak to her sister or her lover. And Lee. Karl found himself making daily apologies to the memory of Zak for letting Lee get to the point where even Kara dragging him away and into her cave didn't erase the starkness in his eyes. He smiled so rarely.

Still, life went on as it was wont to do and they planted and hunted and practiced with their swords for the inevitable day when they were discovered, and he and Sharon wrapped themselves around each other every night in their bed, not talking about Hera, while Kara sat up, slowly sewing ugly shirts made from flowers and, miles away, Lee paced the floors in thought.

 

* * *

 

"I don’t have a choice," Lee said stubbornly, and Kara felt a sense of déjà vu as the cousins squared off again. She and Sharon had walked into the cabin from their hunting expedition and smack into the middle of this one, so she had no idea what was going on. She did know that she hadn’t seen Lee in a couple of weeks and that she'd like to at least kiss him before Karl beat him up.

"There is always a choice! Why don't you repeat what you just told me to Kara?" Karl asked and Kara's well honed sense of foreboding kicked in. She moved to stand in front of Lee, whose aggravatingly calm expression flickered a little in the face of her tight lips and folded arms.

"I have to move back to the capital," Lee said flatly. "I won’t be around as often—" He faltered as the anger and hurt that Kara didn’t have the inclination to hide filled her eyes. He stepped in close, speaking quickly and quietly. "Kara, you know if there was any other way I wouldn't. You know that I'd never leave if I didn’t have to. But people are disappearing and I can’t get my arms around what is happening from far away. I know that it's the queen and my father won’t stand up to her and—" he pressed his hands hard into his tired face, "There's no one else," he finished with bleak certainty. And he was probably right.

Kara glanced over to where Sharon was looking at her sympathetically and Karl was staring at Lee with an expression of abject misery and helplessness. This was Lee. They all knew that there was nothing else to be said on the matter. She took Lee by the elbow and guided him toward the door, stopping long enough for Karl to hug him fiercely and whisper something in his ear that made Lee shake his head and smile. Sharon took both of Lee's hands in her own and kissed his cheek. 

"I'll be back," he said to the unhappy couple standing in front of him. "I'll find out what's going on, and I'll find out more about Hera and I'll come back," and he followed Kara as she tugged him out into the dusk.

* * *

Lee lay in Kara's bed with Kara sprawled half on top of him. He breathed in deeply, taking in the smell of her skin and the salt in the air. He ran a hand up and down her back, trying to memorize the feel of her against him. She stirred and he pulled her even closer, willing himself not to notice how late it truly was, how he had to leave soon so as to not arouse suspicion. The night was warm and sultry, and only the reflection of the moon off the water illuminated their tangled limbs. Pieces of time were all they had. Fragmented moments grabbed greedily and clung to in memory to keep him strong, keep him fighting, to keep him from drowning in the storm. And Lee wanted more than stolen hours and absconded minutes. He at least wanted Kara to know that, while he had always had something that he would die for, with her in his arms he now also had a reason to live.

"Kara," he spoke softly, the hushed words barely rising over the rush of the sea. She raised her drowsy head to rest a chin on his chest, looking at him with sad eyes and Lee realized that she had been waiting for the moment that always came, where he would tell her he had to go, had to leave her alone in a cave again. Lee traced his fingers lightly down her face. He had never wanted to put that look on her face and he nearly backed out so as not to add to her burden. There were some words though that he needed to be say out loud in order to give them power. 

"I love you."

Her breath caught and she looked as though she might speak, so Lee gently put his hand over mouth. Whatever journey Kara was on, it demanded silence and he would not let her stumble if he could help it. She kissed his palm and he removed it, sliding his hand into the heaviness of her hair. "I love you," he repeated and she closed her eyes, a heat-breaking smile spreading across her face. Lee wriggled so that he was lying fully underneath her and she stared down at him. "I love you," he insisted.

Kara kissed him softly before pulling back to tug the ring she always wore off her thumb. She sat up, sitting cross legged at the end of the bed and contemplated him gravely, figuring out a puzzle, before she abruptly crawled down onto the throw rug. "What are you doing?" Lee asked, bemused as she pushed at his shoulder until he sat up and swung his feet to the ground. She shuffled until she was kneeling between his thighs. She held up her thumb ring to eye level and placed her other hand over her heart, staring at him intently.

Lee's mouth went dry. He didn’t know what to say. Didn't know if it was real. She moved her hand from her heart to lightly touch his forehead, his lips and the center of his chest, a gesture he recognized from her morning prayers, before she took his left hand and slid her ring onto his finger. Kara tilted her head and smiled hopefully, at him and he saw that she was staking her own claim at a life. And, as he was learning more and more with this remarkable woman, there were other times when words were superfluous. He laced his fingers with hers, and gently touched her forehead, her lips and her chest and then leant in and traced the same path with his lips, pressing kisses reverently.

Kara pulled his head up and grinned, nodding exaggeratedly with both eyebrows raised. Lee laughed and hauled her in and up onto his lap. Suddenly it didn’t matter, not the logistics, not the distance, not the in-laws, not even the fact that he was leaving soon and wouldn't be back for some time. "Yes," he said as her arms encircled his neck and tears unexpectedly stung his eyes. "Yes, I'll marry you."

In the end, despite the danger, he stayed until dawn, finding it oddly comforting to see her standing in the mouth of the cave as the sun made its way into the sky as he took one last long look at her before crossing the border to Galactica.

* * *

At Sharon's insistence, two years to the day after Kara had first swung a sword at Lee, they were married on their beach by the same unflappable priest who had married Karl and Sharon. It was a surreal experience for Kara, her fiancé having run out of the trees about fifteen minutes after they were supposed to start, panting and apologizing, but at least alive and safe and holding her hand. She had been unable to do anything but nod and touch Lee in response to his vows and declarations, which left her nearly ill with anxiety that it might not be real when it wasn't spoken out loud. But Lee was real. The sweat still running down his face despite the coolness of the day was real, salty and slippery against her lips as she went through the ritual of kissing his forehead and both cheeks. The stunned happiness in his eyes was real as the priest declared them bound. The love in her heart was real. So real. And blazing. And burning her up from the inside out.

Karl and Sharon offered their congratulations and took the priest with them to their cabin for lunch, leaving the newly wed couple standing alone on the sand, hands clasped. Kara tugged Lee in and put her arms around his waist, bowing her neck to rest her forehead against his chest. His fingers untangled from hers to stroke down her hair, over her ears and shoulders, skimming down her back and then up over and over again. She waited for the words, his unending litanies of good-byes that should have warned them both off, but instead had brought them together. Kara forcibly pushed that thought aside. It was well traveled territory and something she and Lee had both decided to deal with. This marriage was the only thing in their lives that was just for them and she would protect it as fiercely she guarded her silence.

* * *

Viper galloped through the trees, the whippy green branches of spring scratching at his flanks in the dark. Lee lay low over his horse's back, clutching his prize close to his chest, hoping that he wasn't seen, wasn't followed as he burst out onto the beach. The horse chose that moment to be theatrical, raising up on his hind legs and trumpeting his presence. Kara burst out of the cave half dressed and fully armed. She gasped at the sight of Viper and ran forward to soothe him as Lee slid off his back. She raised a startled hand to her throat when she saw what Lee was carrying. "Hera," he confirmed and Kara's eyes filled as she took in a miniature replica of her sister. 

"Here," Lee thrust the child into her arms and quickly stripped the saddle off Viper, talking as he worked. "We need to get off this beach, just in case I was followed." He paused to stroke a grateful hand down his horse's neck. "Can you carry her and I'll walk him with us? Cool him down a little. He's had a rough night." Kara nodded, cuddling her niece, who was, surprisingly, not crying. Lee jogged up to the cave and threw his saddle in. He took Viper's lead in one hand and Kara's elbow in the other and started to walk up the path to Sharon and Karl's, but Kara stopped. Lee looked back at her, urgency coloring every thought in his head until he met her expectant and irritated eyes. He hadn’t seen his wife in over a month. He dropped Viper's lead and wrapped his arms around Kara and Hera, pressing his open mouth against Kara' neck, nearly weeping in relief to have her so close. She sighed and melted into him for a moment before pulling back to kiss him warmly on the mouth. "I'm sorry," Lee said. "My head's all over the place." She kissed him again. "Gods, I missed you," he said against her mouth, breaking into a rueful laugh when Hera started pulling his hair. "Guess that's our cue." 

Kara shifted Hera to her hip and offered her free hand to Lee. He took it, kissed her knuckles and laced his fingers through hers. He scooped up Viper's reins in his other hand and they made their careful way through the dark toward Sharon and Karl's. Lee's stomach churned the closer they came to the cabin. Acid swishing at the risk he had taken on the behalf of his family. He untangled his hand from Kara's when they got to the door, tending to Viper as she knocked. Kara then went over and pulled Lee to stand at the door next to her. He unthinkingly put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him, offering strength as the door opened.

* * *

"I'm too tired to go back tonight," Lee said as they trudged down to the cave, Viper trailing behind. "I don’t care about anything but getting you naked and into bed." Kara squeezed his hand hard and pulled her stumblingly exhausted husband along. She doubted he'd be awake two seconds after his head hit the pillow, but she was more than willing to give it a shot. She pushed him into the cave and brought fresh water out in a bucket for Viper, lavishing attention on the big horse she had missed. Maybe she could take him for a quick run before Lee left in the morning. 

As she had suspected, when Kara walked back into the cave, Lee was already curled up and asleep under the sheets of their bed. She stripped slowly, feeling aged by circumstance. The things that could have gone wrong with Lee's little rescue mission were too numerous to count. She could hit him for not telling her the plan, for going in without backup, for having possibly put himself in an even worse position with the queen. She might still hit him, actually. Kara had been saving up a list of times he had scared her to death with half told tales of court intrigue, the worse for being partially left to her imagination. When the six years were over and she and her siblings were reunited and human and Cavil overthrown, and she and Lee and Sharon and Karl and Hera all living in her childhood home, together and safe, Kara was going to beat the hell out of Lee everyday for a month for all the worrying he had put her through.

She sat on the edge of the bed and ran her hand slowly up his side. This was not her kind of mission, but she was doing it anyway; for her country, her brothers and sisters. For Lee. It all hinged on her, it's just that nobody knew it. Lee stirred and opened his eyes, blinking at her. Kara pulled down the sheets and snuggled in tight beside him, shaking her head with a smile as he sleepily rolled her over and onto her back. He threw a leg and an arm across her body and tucked his head onto her chest and fell right back to sleep. Kara rested her lips against his forehead and wrapped both arms around him as she drifted into unremarkable dreams.

* * *  
They lived their lives apart, three shirts, four shirts, five shirts done, the sixth one started, stalling legislation with word games, carrying the weight of the world and the fates of two nations day after day until they could meet again, the long stretches of solitude filled with the grey solace of duty, honor, country. The plodding routine punctuated by short stabs of color and joy sharp enough to wound. 

They dwelled in the in-betweens, existing on a border of two kingdoms, two worlds, thriving in the leftover spaces. It was not enough, but more than either expected. They knew their time was finite, that they could not go on, unnoticed forever. As the months passed, they collected moments as intently as Hera gathered the tumbled and worn seashells from the shore. 

* * *

Lee felt the arrow pierce his thigh right as he stumbled onto the beach and cursed at his stupidity, hoping against hope that Kara was at Karl's and hadn’t heard his startled shout. It had finally happened after years of worrying about it and coming anyway. He had led the Queen's guards right over the border and straight to his wife. He cursed, trying to pick himself up, but the man was already on top of him, arrow pointed at his chest and malice in his eyes. "Where are you going, my prince?" He sneered out the title.

"Out for a run on the beach," Lee replied, trying to keep the soldier's attention as he saw his wife creep out of the cave with her bow and arrow in hand.

"The queen commands your presence."

"As her Majesty wishes," Lee said levelly. "Let me just take care of the arrow sticking out of my leg and I will be along shortly."

The guard didn't have a chance to respond because Kara had put an arrow in the base of his skull. Her face was white as she ran toward him. "Kara, get out of here," Lee gritted out. "These guards never travel alone." She ignored him and pushed him face first into the sand, running her hands gently over where the arrow had sunk deeply into the muscle. She smoothed an apologetic palm over his back before grasping the shaft and wrenching it free from his leg. He bit his hand to keep back a noise. He heard tearing cloth over the pounding of fast approaching hooves and a makeshift bandage was suddenly being efficiently wrapped around his thigh. 

He forced himself to roll over, "Go" Lee said quietly. "If you love me, you will get the hell out of here." Kara smacked his face sharply and he put his hand on his cheek in shock. She linked their left hands, letting their wedding rings clink together and stared at him, daring him to make that suggestion again. The sound of the approaching enemy, muffled by loose sand filled the air. "I love you," Lee said and Kara kissed him like there was no one else in the world. The hooves got louder and louder until the last minute when Kara spun in front of Lee with an arrow notched in her bow while Lee drew his sword.

* * *

"So you are the reason our Leland has been disappearing so regularly these past few years. Another lost Cylon royal." The queen stood outside Kara's cell. "I had no idea how many of you there were wandering around our border." Kara had no idea how long she'd been imprisoned, it seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few days. She hadn't seen Lee since the fight on the beach, when they had been surrounded by fifteen Galactica soldiers on horseback. She had killed every one of her targets, but had been limited by the five arrows she carried. Lee had gone down first when he took another precise arrow, sinking into his already serious wound. He had thrown her his sword as his leg collapsed underneath him, but one of the queen's guards had ridden up close behind her and, before she could turn, had knocked her on the head and everything had gone black. 

Kara was sick with worry but kept it buried. From everything Lee had ever told her about this woman, she knew that any weakness would be used against her. "Lee says that you don't talk," Laura mused. "He says that he was running along the beach and came across you; that he helped you because he was concerned about a person living alone, unable to speak. He said that he fell in love with you, married you, and you have never said a word in all that time." Kara didn’t move.

"I suggest you find your tongue, Cylon," Laura said lightly. "It will be difficult to stand trial if you have nothing to say." The queen departed without another word. Kara did rapid calculations in her mind, trying to figure out the exact date, but it was impossible in this cell. She had mere days left in this miserable mission, and now she was going to stand trial and the shirts were in the cave, all but the sleeve of one finished. Despair wrapped around her. So close. So frakking close. Surely God would not have taken her so far, brought her a lost sister, a lost niece, a good natured brother-in-law and a husband she didn’t want to survive without only to take it all away so close to the end. She sank to her knees and prayed for a miracle.

* * *

"A joint trial?" Lee asked Laura, his spirit rising a little. "Then I can speak for Kara."

"You will do nothing of the kind," Laura said. "I'm sure she is perfectly capable of speaking for herself. If she is not inclined to comment, that is her business. This is for the sake of expediency. I don’t want your father to have to deal with this."

"You don't want my father to know about this," Lee corrected coldly. This was a farce. He was guilty of everything that he was accused of, aiding and abetting a Cylon and a known traitor, colluding with the enemy, kidnapping a child. There was no proof, but the circumstantial evidence, down to being married to the sister of the escaped Cylon prisoner was enough to convict him. Not to mention the person deciding his fate, hearing his case, was the queen. The only thing helping him was that Karl, Sharon and Hera had not been found. He didn’t know where they were, but it brought him comfort to think of the little family, tucked away from this mess.

"Last chance Lee," Laura said softly, with all the contrived charm that had sucked him in when she had first married his father. "You can still do the smart thing."

"You know, Laura, that's your problem," Lee said. "You're always so concerned about doing the smart thing that you often forget to do the right thing." 

She reared back. "I see that there is nothing more to say to you, Prince Leland."

"There really isn’t, Your Majesty," Lee agreed. "Send in my attorney, assuming I'm still afforded one." He took one last, disgusted look at his stepmother from behind his bars before turning his back on the angry queen. He limped over to his cot, sat down, and turned his attention back to the book he had been pretending to read when she had first come in. Laura's heels clicked as she walked out. He doubted he'd see her again until trial. The dull ache in his chest expanded as he thought of Kara, alone in her own cell somewhere in this dungeon. He hoped that she forgave him for bringing the soldiers to her, for bringing the certainty of execution down upon her head. In the end, he hoped she thought that his love and sporadic presence had been worth it.

* * *

The morning of the trial dawned clear and bright, something Kara noticed as she was marched from the dungeon to the throne room where the trial was being held, it was crowded, nobles milling about in expectation of a good show. She looked around as best she could for Lee. They pushed her forcibly into a chair at a table, next to the enigmatic man who was her lawyer and Lee's friend, Romo Lampkin, whom she had met a couple of times, bearing messages from her husband. She had also received more invaluable information from Lampkin; the date. 

Today was the final day. At sunset she had to give the shirts to her brothers and sisters to turn them into humans. So close and now snatched away. For a moment she resented Lee for the intrusion. If he has never come into her life and turned it inside out and sideways, she would have been sitting in the cave this very day with her siblings come sunset. But it would be her brothers and sisters minus Sharon, and minus Karl, who was now as much brother as any of her feathered ones. She would never have known her niece. She would never have frakked against a tree in a storm to a man with a will to match her own. She would never have cared so much, her heart nearly breaking from it. No. She wouldn’t, couldn’t regret Lee. No matter where there road had taken them.

Just as Kara came to that conclusion, Lee sat next to her. He looked at her solemnly, clearly awaiting her condemnation. She tried to smile at him but it got stuck somewhere in the middle, so she bit her lip to stop its trembling and put her hand on his leg. She hadn’t seen him come in, so she didn’t know if he was limping badly or not. Lee's hand moved convulsively and grasped hers too tightly, but she gripped right back. His beautiful eyes searched hers and she cursed her own stubborn refusal to speak, even on the cusp of failure. He leaned in despite the location and kissed her cheek, touching her forehead, lips and chest with the tips of his fingers in mirror of the day she had proposed to him, in imitation of the blessing on their wedding day. "I love you," he whispered against her ear and Kara nodded, squeezing his fingers and turning her head to catch his mouth with her own. 

Their lips caught and clung until Lampkin interrupted. "Touching as this all is, and far be it for me to intrude on lovers reuniting, but we now have to rise for the queen." Kara clambered to her feet and noted Lee moving more slowly, pulling on her hand a little to gain extra leverage. She refused to let go of him and was relieved that he wasn't trying to make her. 

Laura swept in, regal in her stark black robes, red hair streaming over her shoulders. "You may be seated," her voice rang out across the room and they all sat and the trial began.

Witness after witness stepped up for the prosecution. Lampkin managed to skewer them on cross examination, but it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was Laura's opinion, and she had made up her mind years ago about Cylons and her living stepson. Finally, the prosecution rested and Lampkin turned to call Lee to the stand, but Laura interceded. "Mr. Lampkin, I would like to hear from the other defendant, the Cylon." Kara froze and she heard Lee's breathing quicken beside her

"Your Majesty," Lampkin said, "You know that she can’t speak.”

"No, I know that she won’t speak. There's a difference." 

"Madame, it is highly irregular, not to mention illegal, for the judge to tell me what witnesses I must call."

"I make the laws, Mr. Lampkin. I am the law. This woman is not a citizen of my kingdom, she is not afforded the same rights. I want her on the stand now." One of her guards step forward, and Kara would be damned if she was going to be dragged, so she stood, pulling away from Lee, and walked to the stand. "Has this defendant been sworn in?" The bailiff nodded. "Very well, proceed Mr. Lampkin."

Lampkin looked at Kara, and then briefly back at Lee before stating, "I have no questions for this witness." He sat down.

The prosecutor stood and strode forward. "Is it true that you are a Cylon royal?" Kara nodded. "Your Majesty, please direct the witness to answer the question."

"You will speak, Cylon," Laura said, lips curling. "No sign language in my court." There went her last hope. She looked at Lee, who had closed his eyes and turned his head briefly before opening them to meet hers.

The prosecutor began again. "Is it true that you are a Cylon royal?" Kara looked straight ahead, saw Lee whispering in Lampkin's war. Saw Lampkin jerking back and staring before insistently whispering back to his client. 

"Do you know the Cylon prisoner that was known as Sharon?" She said nothing, and on they went. Questions flew around her about Sharon, Karl, Lee, Hera, her parents, her missing siblings, the Galactican soldiers she had killed fighting to save her and Lee's lives. Lee kept his eyes locked on hers. Steady and still in the flurry of voices and accusations around flying around her. She was finally dismissed from the stand by a triumphant sounding queen. 

"I call to the stand Prince Leland of Galactica." Lampkin's voice was flat and defeated but Kara ignored it to make the most of the brief moment of contact between when she sat down and Lee limped heavily to the stand; the brushing of their hands against each other to give him the strength to possibly save himself. "Your Highness, how long have you known the Cylon prisoner known as Sharonzz?" Lee did not answer and Kara was suddenly filled with dawning, horrific knowledge. "Prince Leland, please answer the question." It wasn't a lawyer's tone but a pleading from one friend to another to save himself. 

The queen's sharp voice rang out, "Prince Leland, I command you to answer the question." Lee said nothing. There was an edge of panic in Laura's voice, and Kara knew what Lee did not; that the queen had never intended on killing him, she just wanted to break him to her will. She had set a ball in motion that she was very unwilling to follow through on, but now she was trapped by her own game. Trapped into executing her husband's only remaining son. 

Lampkin sat back down, and the prosecutor attempted to get Lee to talk but to no avail. He just looked at Kara, ignoring her pleading eyes. She couldn’t stand watching him throw himself away like that. Big jagged holes tore into her heart with every question he refused to answer. He was going to die. Kara knew. He was going to die right along with her. The lawyer finally gave up and Lee limped back to her. She looked at him, shaking her head in mute plea. He merely took her hand and kissed each knuckle, not bothering to hide it from the prying eyes of his own court. She didn't hear the closing argument, didn’t really hear the sentencing, although that managed to drift into her brain, even as she stared at Lee in disbelief at his pointless sacrifice. They would be burned at the stake together at sunset. All rose to let Laura out of the courtroom and Kara was afraid that they'd be parted again, but Lampkin took care of it, exchanging their last meals for the right for them to await their deaths together. 

The moment the cell door closed, Kara punched Lee in the face, tears rolling freely from her eyes. "I had to," Lee said, rubbing his jaw. Kara swung at him again without her normal precision and control and he caught her wrist. "You can’t make me," he said a little wildly. "You can’t make me live without you." And Kara broke, wrapping herself around him and weeping silently into his shoulder. He pressed kisses all over her hair, face, everywhere he could reach. 

She buried her face in his shoulder, too sad and sick to move. "Hey, Kara. What are you doing? Listen to me." He pried her face off him and held it both his hands. "I'm here. You're here. This is all that matters. Not the cell, not tonight. Just us." 

Kara nodded at his words, full to the brim with love and regret and just an enormous, selfish sense of gratefulness that he'd be with her at the end warring with an enormous, selfish sense of betrayal that he would put his death so squarely on her shoulders. She'd never asked for this kind of responsibility but she had gotten it anyway, and her life had been the richer for it. 

Kara walked backwards, pulling him with her as she tumbled onto the cot in the cell. He landed on top of her and she wrapped her legs and arms around his body and arched up into him, opening her mouth to his lips and clutching him as tight a she could for as long as they had left. 

* * *

At ten minutes to sunset, Lee and Kara were marched out of their cell, their hands tied behind their backs, not close enough to touch each other any more, and Lee's whole body clenched at that loss; the loss of her skin against his and the breathy catches that passed for moans in his silent wife's vocabulary were almost too much to bear. Her smile, her eyes, her determination and love and the life that surrounded her, that glowed in her brighter than anyone else, all to be extinguished. All because of him.

"Kara," he called out as they were being tied back to back to the stake in the middle of a pile of dry branches, in the middle of the town square. "Do you remember when you tried to teach me how to fish with your spear and I fell in and speared my toe instead?"

He didn’t know if he was doing any good, but he wanted to try to give her some peace at the end, maybe only a portion of what she had given him, but still. "Do you know that the first time I saw you running out of that cave to skewer me I nearly lost my breath at how beautiful you were?" the ropes were firmly tied and he could feel Kara straining against them, his brave girl, still fighting. Until he realized that she had just been trying to twist her hands around so that their fingers could link around the post. "Thank you," he whispered, feeling her fingers tighten on his. "I have always loved you," he said steadily as the sun hit the horizon. "I will always love you." A rustling of wings distracted him from the men lighting the fire around them. "And if there is a God or gods or anything after this, I will find you again," he vowed as all hell broke loose.

* * *

A figure leaped into the fire. Sharon, with sword raised high, cutting the ropes binding her. She shoved the six shirts into Kara's hands and moved to free Lee. The swans that had been circling swooped down one by one and Kara threw the shirts over their heads as they flew past, landing gently as humans. D'Anna, Galen, Simon, Caprica, Doral all transformed back in their entirety and Leoben back mostly, but with a wing instead of a left arm because of the shirt Kara could not finish. She didn’t dwell on the guilt as Karl rushed by, throwing her a sword and then tossing one to Lee as well. "Best diversion in the history of diversions!" Karl yelled to them as they tumbled out of the fire, "Now let's get the hell out of here!"

Kara swung around, assessing the situation, noticing Lee doing the same. "Lee!" she croaked out, grimacing when her voice stuck and didn’t carry. Clearly she needed more practice, but God did it feel good to say her husband's name for the first time, even if he hadn’t heard it.

"Incoming!" Lee yelled and he and Kara engaged with the few guards who had been surrounding what was to be their funeral pyre. They kept backing up into the crowd, hearing the soldiers standing outside of the masses trying to push in as the people murmured in amazement at the miracle that had occurred in front of them. 

"This way!" Caprica yelled, and Lee looked at Kara who nodded reassurance before fighting in the direction of her voice. She made him go first so that she was the one guarding him from the advancing guard from the rear and her seven warrior brothers and sisters and his cousin guarded his front. He was simply moving too slow on that leg to be able to keep up a sustained attack. She cut a soldier's nose off who got to close to Lee, making them back up a little at her ferocious defense. Swords ahead and behind, the fire still roaring. Kara laughed in delight. It was finally her kind of fight. 

She caught Lee looking up in surprise at the sound and she grinned fully at him while she fended off yet another ungainly blow to the head. "You know, if I hadn’t seen you and Karl fight before, I would be having serious doubts about the prowess of the Galactican army," she said. It was hoarse and ugly, but it was still her voice and he had still heard it. She spun around to swing at her new opponent's knees and Lee's sword arced over her head to slice across the soldier's chest. He hauled her up, pulling her as fast as the crowd and his leg allowed. "Don't worry about me, Lee," Kara said. "It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you."

"Those are the first words you choose to speak after all these years?" He was trying to sound incredulous, but Kara could hear the fine trembling underneath. It had been a long day for all of them.

"They weren't my first words," Kara panted as they finally broke through the crowd to find that the soldiers in front of them were already dead or incapacitated and a bunch of horses, including Viper, waiting for them. 

"Who brought Viper?" Lee asked as he accepted his cousin's help up into the saddle before Karl ran for a different horse. 

"Lampkin," Karl yelled back. "Now move!"

Kara had already swung herself in front of Lee and was urging Viper out of town. She did a quick head count, finding everyone she loved, with the exception of Hera who she'd worry about later, all present and accounted for before she gave Viper his head and followed them. Lee wrapped his arms around her, leaning with the movements of her body, as in synch as always. "So what were you first words, Kara?" he asked close to her ear.

"The first thing I said was Lee," she said, laying her hand briefly over his as they clasped around her middle. He kissed her neck once before tucking down into her again, trying to make the ride easier for Viper as they raced toward the Cylon border. 

* * *

They were stopping briefly to pick up Hera at the hut of the priest who had married Karl and Sharon and Kara and Lee, when an argument broke out among the Cylons about how and when they were going to overthrow Cavil. Karl, Lee and Hera looked on for a couple of minutes in bemused silence before they shrugged and walked a small distance away where they could hear themselves think.

Hera held out her arms to Lee and he picked her up obligingly, hugging the little girl to his chest as he talked to her father. "So, what exactly happened back there?" 

Karl scratched his head. "Hell if I know. One minute we're sitting at dinner, the next minute swans are sitting at our doorstep, and transforming into Kara and Sharon's brothers and sisters, they tell some crazy story about being turned into birds and Kara's vow of silence and how you two have been captured, where you are, bring the shirts, etc. And then they turned back into birds and flew away and Sharon was running to your cave for those ugly flower shirts and telling me to bring Hera to the priest." He made a face at his daughter and ruffled her curls.

"Oh," Lee said, nodding. "Wait–what?"

"I don’t know, man. Ask Sharon or Kara. Or Simon or Doral–"

"I get it."

"Or D'Anna or Galen or Leoben or Caprica," Karl finished. 

Lee felt a little stunned. "Wow. In-laws."

Karl nodded sagely, "We're lucky we have each other."

"Right," Lee said.

"Right," Hera agreed and they laughed as they walked back to their squabbling new family.

* * *

They rode all night, much to Kara's annoyance. She had voted to slow down because of Lee's leg, but Leoben and flapped his wing and made everyone feel bad for him so he had gotten his way. "You okay?" she asked as they approached the home she hadn’t seen in six years.

"Yeah," Lee said, but she could tell he was in a lot of pain.

"Did anyone look at that properly?"

"Well enough," he said.

"Well enough to fight a crowd of soldiers and then ride two days straight?"

"No, not well enough for that, but Viper's getting the worst of this bargain," he said leaning forward to pat his horse's sweaty neck.

Kara leaned back into Lee but slid her hands along Viper's neck. "Not long now," she crooned.

"I always knew you liked the horse better then me." Kara laughed, enjoying letting her emotions bubble up and out. The confrontation ahead wasn't going to be fun, but it wasn't going to be a fight. Not with all the witnesses and the law and the return of the royals. "You and Karl and Hera better stand back a little until we explain things."

"No way," Lee said.

"This is just going to be a political thing," Kara assured him. "No bloodshed, as long as you and Karl don’t get in the way."

"I'm pretty good at politics," Lee said. Kara looked at him in disbelief. "Seriously," he insisted, "Laura's myopic and paranoid and suffers from delusions of grandeur. That isn't my fault."

They clattered through the Cylon capital, silence falling over the crowd at the sight of the presumed dead royals. They gathered quite a following of people as they made their slow way to the center of the city to the palace. 

A glowering Cavil and a weeping Ellen were waiting for them in the courtyard. Before either of them could speak, Caprica started the process, witnessed by what seemed like most of the city's citizens. "We move to remove our mother, Ellen, and our cousin, Cavil, from the circle of governance."

"We agree," said Doral and on down the line until it reached Kara.

"We agree," she said.

"We disagree," Cavil snapped with anger.

"We agree," said Ellen. Her mother's answer made Kara's heart jump. Maybe there was some hope left. She started hesitantly forward and that was all Ellen needed to run forward into her children's arms.

* * *

They lay in their bed. Their first bed that wasn't a makeshift cot where they were forced to sleep crushed together. Kara hung onto Lee tightly anyway. It had been too damn close. "That was intense," Lee sighed into her hair. "Who knew you were so noisy?"

"I did," Kara said sleepily. Lee hummed happily and pushed her over so he could kiss down her body. "Again?" Kara asked with such dismay in her voice that Lee rolled onto his back and laughed.

"I was just kissing you," he said when he got his breath back. "I have a lot of making up to do in that department."

"We've got the rest of our lives for that," Kara assured him.

"Yeah we do," Lee answered and they grinned unabashedly at each other before Kara shuffled in close and draped herself over his side again. 

"What are we going to do about Galactica?" she asked.

"I'll start moving to open peace negotiations tomorrow, if that's alright with the clan," he said. "One of the conditions will be that we speak only to my father. I can’t imagine he was pleased when he came back to find out that his wife tried to kill me. We may not be close, but I'm still his son."

"Think anything will come of it?" Kara asked, tracing a finger along his collarbone.

"I don't know," Lee admitted a little sadly. "I still want to try though." Kara nodded and continued to draw patterns along his skin. A sudden yawn cracked her jaw and prompted her to stretch out further along him, wiggling her toes against his. "I can't believe I can actually wake up with you tomorrow without having to run off somewhere," he said gleefully and she smiled at him before closing her eyes. "Good-night, Kara. Love you," he said softly.

Kara's eyes shot open when she realized that this was a gift she hadn't given him yet, even if he already knew. She propped herself up, looking into those blue eyes. She kissed his nose and smiled. "I love you too." And he pulled her down flush against his chest and they fell asleep, finally home.


End file.
